Social Studies
Another thing that happened while the blog was asleep: I joined Google Plus.
I don’t spend much time on social networks. My life is broken down roughly into a hierarchy of Work, Family, Food, Sleep, Friends, and Recreation and that last one usually involves family if possible. Also the first one takes up a huge part of each day.
Still, I’ve found my Twitter account useful for short bursts sent out to many people (about 230,000 followers as of this morning, though that seems to include more than my share of bots), and Facebook, well… you kinda have to have Facebook. So I do. But I’ve never been a fan.
Yesterday, I asked on all three a hypothetical question: If you had to get rid of either Google+ or Facebook forever, which would it be.
Despite being only a few weeks old, G+ users (in 142 responses, as of this morning) were nearly unanimous that they’d nuke FB without batting an eyelash. My Facebook fan page followers (my personal page is pretty small and hard to link to) offered 34 responses, with less enthusiasm, but mostly stood by the service. Twitter… well, take a look.
Google paid me to do the Chrome comic a few years ago, so I can’t ever claim to be 100% impartial, but the truth is I kinda love Google Plus so far, and will probably shift my attention there much more than Facebook as the service grows.
What little attention I can spare for these things anyway. Still have a book to draw!
March 3, 2021
Scott: Do you think the difference is that many fewer people are on Google+ and it’s just easier to see your post? By now there are so many people whose updates appear in my FB feed, I can’t follow everything they post. (There are people whose posts I haven’t seen in six or eight months.)
Google+ is like a party that’s just getting started, as opposed to the gala ball that’s so overstuffed you can’t hear what anyone is saying. But when enough people join, that will surely change.
Actually, one of the nice things about G+ is that as it grows, even to the point that I’m following hundreds (or even thousands) of people, I can still click on just my closest friends — or any other subgroup — to see what’s up with them.
Even though I’m dimly aware that FB might have something similar, I’ve never been able to find it in all the fuzz. G+’s circles just makes sense to me.
Facebook does have the same thing, as is the case with other things people are talking about being “new” for Google+. It’s possible to make and sort by groupings in Facebook, whether it’s privacy of posts and photos or looking at new posts from them.
I’d second the suggestion that you got more responses on Google+ because right now Google+ is starving for material. Your mileage may, of course, vary, depending on how many people you know on Google+ and how much material they’re generating, but personally there’s more on my Facebook feed than I can get to in a day, and on my Google+ feed I can be caught up by spending five minutes every few days.
For me, Google+ isn’t different enough from Facebook to be worth it.
Hey Chris, did you know that the reason why you don’t see everyone’s post on fb is also bcuz fb filters them for you? You see the ones you interact with most first and once your feed is filled up, only the latest/newest posts appear.. Which is kind of lame in a way bcuz they don’t ask you if you want it that way, they just do it for you.
If you go to the bottom of your Facebook home page and click on “Edit Options,” it allows you to change between seeing posts from all your friends/pages and those you interact with the most.
@Liz: Yes, definitely! Which is frustrating beyond words. (I have the same problem with fan pages, where my comic has more than 2,000 fans but fewer than 600 people get to see our posts. Thanks, FB!!) So, that is definitely a factor — but I can’t help thinking size has something to do with it. When Google+ hits 500 million members, will we be talking about how much easier it is to interact with people in the next new, smaller social networking format?
I just like that the newsfeed is static – I feel like I’m just scrolling through lots of interesting things, with no weird jigging about and losing stuff. Will it feel the same when it’s not beta..
If your worried about Google+ mining you for advertising information, you can have a lot of fun making Sh!t up. This can lead to some weird combinations of banner ads though.
I honestly don’t know. I’m firmly established on Twitter and have a Facebook fan page for my comics series. Even with multi-tasking tools out there like Ping.fm, it may not be wise to be present on several different social networks. It can sap your efforts and ultimately your strength.